Enable building snaps from source

[dholbach]

Build a snap from eksctl source. @mikeroyal and I worked on this (#871 and mikeroyal#1 are previous attempts at getting this in).

Description

To build the snap, run

# Prep
sudo snap install snapcraft --classic
sudo snap install multipass --beta --classic

# Actual build
snapcraft

The resulting snap works nicely for me.

[dholbach]

This would need to be hooked up with CI and all, but this should be first steps for allowing us to

• push directly to the snap store (without gatekeepers)
• get packages out to all these distros: https://docs.snapcraft.io/installing-snapd
• keep users automatically up to date
• have different release channels

[errordeveloper]

This would need to be hooked up with CI and all

In order to do that, we should integrate this as part of our release process, goreleaser supports snaps. I believe this simply implies we need make snap/snapcraft.yaml part of .goreleaser.yml, probably in a manner similar to how .goreleaser.brew.yml is done.

https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/blob/ae1436bfaf4580a736199dca0d8bd8e78228f668/do-release.sh#L12-L13

[dholbach]

Thanks Ilya for the feedback. I'm not sure what the best way is to hook this up with goreleaser. 🤷‍♂️

[errordeveloper]

My comment above was indeed to explain the direction, did you replied before I added extra details to it?

…

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019, 3:12 pm Daniel Holbach, ***@***.***> wrote: Thanks Ilya for the feedback. I'm not sure what the best way is to hook this up with goreleaser. 🤷‍♂ — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#969>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAB5MS5Q4E42POG4MVASWBDP5SXVZANCNFSM4H5FLSKA> .

[dholbach]

Ah ok. Shall we do two separate PRs for this?

[errordeveloper]

@dholbach are you interested in finishing this?

[dholbach]

I was thinking we could land this piece of work first, then move on to goreleaser et al in a second PR. It's what I'm unfamiliar with.

[dholbach]

Can we maybe just merge this and then do second PR with whatever's required to enable the build and publication of the snap? Goreleaser has support for snapcraft, but it's not complete.

[dholbach]

Either we use build.snapcraft.io for this (the GH account to set this up will need to be admin unfortunately - to be able to set up the webhook).

If that's not an option, we could try to roll our own and do a:

# Prep
sudo apt install snapd
sudo snap install snapcraft --classic
sudo snap install multipass --beta --classic

# Actual build
snapcraft
snapcraft push eksctl_<version>_amd64.snap

For the last step we'd need to login to the store, etc.

[dholbach]

@martina-if Thanks for assigning.

On this one I think we're blocked because there was the idea to use goreleaser which I don't know anything about.

What I'd suggest:

1. I update this PR
2. we merge it
3. we create a shared account on https://snapcraft.io/
4. I talk to the Snap Store maintainers, so we can take over https://snapcraft.io/eksctl from the inactive developer
5. we figure out a way to do this in CI later (using build.snapcraft.io for this unfortunately requires pretty wide access to the Github repo to set up a webhook for us and there's no manual way to do it: Repo grayed-out at build.snapcraft.io/select-repositories canonical-web-and-design/build.snapcraft.io#1191)

The last point we haven't figured out for fluxctl either yet. I push snaps to the store manually every now and then. The workflow generally is:

# Prep
sudo snap install snapcraft --classic
sudo snap install multipass --classic

# Actual build
snapcraft

# Publishing
snapcraft push eksctl_<version>_amd64.snap --release [stable|beta|edge}

Let me know if it's unclear and if you have different thoughts.

[dholbach]

Updated. The PR is good to go AFAICS. Let's decouple the snap build bits from the publication in the store.

[martina-if]

Hi @dholbach thanks for updating this PR! If you think merging this is the best first step let's do that. Before that, can you please add those instructions here? https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#release-process

[dholbach]

@martina-if I documented things TTBOMK. Please review.

Our options for publishing (once we took over maintenance of the snap):

• publish manually whenever we please
• publish through CI through a mechanism we can figure out ourselves
• publish using build.snapcraft.io (which would require us to at least temporarily give admin privs of the GH repo to the build service, so it can set up a webhook - not sure if that's acceptable for us)